


Out came the sun and dried up all the rain

by a_sparrows_fall



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Disguise, Gen, Post-Iron Man 2, Spying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2018-10-02 10:49:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10216352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_sparrows_fall/pseuds/a_sparrows_fall
Summary: Tony has taken steps to keep Natalie—Natasha—whoever—out of his life after her infiltration of Stark Industries. That doesn't seem to bother her in the slightest.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Part of my abandoned works clean out effort. No beta, just for fun.
> 
> More notes on the original piece at the end.

It’s 12:02 in conference room “Excelsior" ( _who names these things?_ ) and Tony is intensely, deeply proud of himself because he is so completely on time.

Well, two minutes late, obviously, but he’s _close_ to on time, and more importantly, he's the first one there, so he could totally get away with saying he was on time.

So now, waiting. For as much as he makes others wait, he’s not a fan of it himself. He has no idea how to handle idle time; it’s an irritating concept. It grates on him.

He tries to work on a new flight stabilizer design on his phone, but the OS crashes (someone is getting a _very_ snarky bug report). While it reboots, he looks out the floor-to-ceiling conference room windows.

Wow.

He doesn’t take the time to notice it very often, but Stark Tower offers beautiful views, and this conference room has one of the best. New York lies before him in all her glory. He walks to the pane and puts a hand on the glass. The Big Apple is like the most intricate diorama from here—tiny cars barely moving in traffic as their honking rises up from the street, echoing off the buildings. The glint of televisions peeping through high rise windows. Even the window washers at work on the tower, just a few floors down, directly below Tony, making his monolith shine—it’s all just perfect.

He’s reached such a place of tranquility taking in the view, he’s actually a little annoyed when his phone chirps.

It’s an unknown caller. Which shouldn’t technically be possible. Only a tiny handful of whitelisted numbers can even get _through_ to this phone and make it ring.

He’s curious. And kinda pissed.

He answers.

“Stark,” says Natalie—Natasha— _whatever_ —smoothly.

“How did you get this number?” Tony demands. “No, more than that, how did you—"

“Social engineering combined with a well-timed virus—I’ll call the breach in to your digital security team as soon as we hang up. I know a good Red Team and some White Hats who can help.”

Yeah, he just bets she does. Tony’s glad he doesn’t have actual built-in physical superpowers for a moment, because he’s squeezing the phone so hard he would crush it.

“In any case,” she continues, "I need a favor."

“What does Fury want?"

“You’re not listening, Tony. _I_ need a favor."

The ‘ _HA’_ sound that bursts from Tony’s mouth is in no way quiet, and rings with vindication.

“Maybe you should pull out your _textbook_ for a refresher on the definition of ‘ _narcissism_ ,' itsy-bitsy. This is _me_ , looking out for numero uno. I’m not inclined to do favors for agent-type people who stabbed me in the back."

“—in the neck, you mean, and that was only to stop the palladium—" 

“Completely _not_ what I was talking about."

Natasha coos. “Did my report hurt your feelings, Stark? Look, the Avengers Initiative isn’t even a going concern anymore. _All_ the participants were deemed too unstable—if it ever gets back off the ground, I’ll put in a good word with Fury _._ But I need a hand with this first."

There’s some odd sound in a background of her feed, like… a pulley? And some street noise, but distant. Where is she?

“I don’t know what help I could be to a spy."

“Don’t need another spy.” Nat grunts softly, like she’s doing manual labor. “Need a tinkerer."

Tony flops in a rolling chair and spins himself three-sixty before glancing at the main presentation display embedded in the wall, which blinks to life after tracking his eye movement. 12:12. Srinivas and Annalise aren’t usually this late. They are coming up on the 15 minute rule and he’s going to be the only one that showed? No call or anything?

He glances at the meeting schedule on the conference room display—and notices his engineers’ icons are little red hourglasses. Huh. Weird that they would both pick the same unusual image.

“Face it, Stark,” Natasha pulls his attention back, "you’re going stir crazy since the Vanko thing blew over, and you need a new project."

“Mmm-hmm,” Tony hums, in a tone that says, _need more than that to go on._

"Something small scale. Something I could take with me back to S.H.I.E.L.D. with an embedded GPS tracker and some other sensors, maybe? Get a direct feed of what us squirrelly government types are up to?"

“That’s a rather overt— and subversive—offer for you, Princess Sneaky. I thought you were firmly in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s corner. How do I know this isn’t an ask for Fury after all? A psych-out that’s part of some larger plan?"

“Honestly? You don’t."

Tony raps his fingers on the table speedily. “Nat. Can I call you Nat? Nat, you’re not giving me a warm fuzzy here."

“Trust, don’t trust, I don’t care—but this is in your own best interest. At least think about it. I’ll be by with a prototype."

“Okay, have fun with that.” Tony rolls the chair back away from the table a few feet, and slumps low in it, sinking into a posture that Jarvis (the corporeal one, Jarvis Prime) would have chastised him about as a boy. "My building security staff has you blacklisted; we’ve upgraded the tech at every checkpoint. You can’t just walk in the front door anymore."

“Mmm-hmm,” Natasha hums back, sounding as smug as Tony.

There’s a rap on the window. Tony had somehow failed to notice that the window washer had pulled his—no, _her_ — cradle up to be parallel with the conference room window, and said woman is looking in at him as his jaw goes slack and _Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick._

She’s wearing most hideous oversized beige uniform and fiercely 60’s black bob wig he’s ever seen (to hide the bluetooth headset she’s been talking on? Or does she just _like_ it?), but it’s undoubtedly Natasha, suspended on a platform 800 feet in the air, holding a squeegee, and smirking at him.

“Thanks for your concern, but I don’t need a door."

And then—and this is _truly_ terrifying, because the window isn’t supposed to open like that; at this height, it’s not supposed open at _all_ due to safety concerns—she opens a pane of glass inward toward the conference room. It only slides a few inches, but it’s enough to drop a sealed plastic case into the conference room.

“Prototype,” she says, her voice hitting his ear slightly behind the speed of her mouth as the data connection lags. She closes the window back up. "It’s a good start, but it needs more power. You know anyone who could help with that?” She raises an eyebrow.

Well. Check and mate, then.

He swallows. “I’ll, uh, look into it.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be part of a longer work for a Steve/Tony bingo fill for 'Blind Date', the setup being that in between IM2 and Avengers, Nat actually comes back into Tony's life in a pretty significant way and asks him for help on a number of projects. Eventually, she even sets him up on a date with this gorgeous blonde guy... who also turns out to be not only an Agent of SHIELD, but also Captain friggin' America.
> 
> The inspiration was Tony's line in AOU about Clint's kids: "These are... smaller agents."
> 
> I had this idea that he, in addition to being setup with Steve by Nat, Tony starts a kind of odd friendship with her where he trusts her on most things, but starts to assume by default that every single person she introduces to him is an undercover SHIELD agent. And... he's mostly correct about that, hahaha.
> 
> I'm not going to write more for this. But if you want to remix it or add to it, go for it!


End file.
